Changing My Perspective on "Diet"

So, before I dive in, I just want to say that this blog focuses on my journey and is not intended to be a prescription for anyone else's. In other words, I'm in no way suggesting that anything I did or do is what everyone should do or be. I'm mainly writing this for myself. If anyone out there finds anything I say helpful, that's great! I am very aware, however, that those of us outside the norms of what society finds acceptable in terms of size are so often bombarded with advice directives in the form of advice -- everyone is always telling us what we should be doing differently, or what we should never eat, or how we should be changing any and every little thing. I'm trying to be sensitive to that, and only speak about what helped ME.

That said, there are two things that have really helped me get to where I am over the last year: feeling good (i.e. healthy) and looking good (i.e. finding clothes and other things that help me love what I see in the mirror). I'm hoping to alternate posts between these two things and general inspiration/thoughts about body positivity in our culture.

I'll start with feeling good and how I changed my diet to positively impact how I feel. On April 1 of last year, I decided to start just tracking what I was eating. I had gained a lot of weight, and I just didn't feel well. But, I have plenty of experience with so very many diets, and wasn't enthusiastic about re-committing to any of them. I just can't face another low-carb diet, even though they work for me. Calorie restriction also works, but I'm very concerned about the unnatural the additives in "diet" food, and the emerging research that shows that a lot of these additives mess with your body chemistry. I promised myself no judgement and no guilt -- I was just going to log everything I ate and get some insight about what I might, eventually, want to change.

I knew there were apps that would help me with this, and the first one I went with was HealthWatch 360, for one major reason -- the micro-nutrient tracking is the best I've seen anywhere, and since I was more interested in my overall  health than simply in losing weight, I really liked having this information available.

HealthWatch 360 food log and calorie tracker

HealthWatch 360 has a website and an app (iPhone and Android), and I used both (they sync, even though the website and the app have slightly different names). Basically, you enter everything you eat, doing the best you can to be accurate as to portion sizes, and their software calculates not only calories, carbs, protein, fat but even things like iron, vitamin D, Zinc, Potassium, Niacin and 22 other micro-nutrients, including cholesterol. It also breaks down the fat and carb analysis into various categories. As you track, the app calculates a nutrition score (out of 100 points) that tells you whether you're in the "green," "yellow" or "red" for that day. Below the score, little green smilies, yellow neutral faces or red frownies tell you which particular micro-nutrient is contributing to your score, for better or worse, and which foods contributed to the problem, if there is one. A click will take you to a more detailed analysis.

Like many other similar apps, you can set weight loss goals with HealthWatch 360, which will give you a calorie goal for each day, but the other unique feature is that you can track how you feel, how you're sleeping, your blood pressure and other health indicators and then set the app to look for trends that might be linked (or not) to diet. Like you can track sugar intake and energy levels, or protein intake and how well you sleep. There's an exercise log as well, where you can track your exercise, and also gain back calories (if you're tracking those).

Starting out, this was exactly the kind of information I was looking for, and it was a big eye-opener, especially when it came to exactly how many calories, and how much fat and sugar, I was consuming, and how little of other vital nutrients. It wasn't so much the amount of fat and sugar that was shocking -- it was the percentage of my diet that was taken up by those two components. Just having that knowledge motivated me to pay a little more attention to what I was choosing to eat, and how much. After a couple weeks of tracking, I felt ready to begin a more concerted effort to try to lose weight, and improve my health, by staying under a specific calorie target, and watching fat and sugar intake was a major component of that effort. I also used the micro-nutrient information to make sure I was choosing things that were lower in sodium and higher in iron, B vitamins and other places where I know my typical diet is deficient.

After a few months I did get really frustrated with their food database, which was very limited compared to My Fitness Pal, especially because I cook a lot and it was hard to find specific products for the recipe ingredients. So once I had a good baseline in terms of the kind of food I should and should not be choosing, I switched over to My Fitness Pal, which has a fantastic database and also has a more generous (in my opinion) calorie allowance for weight loss goals. Over the summer, however, HealthWatch 360 made some upgrades, which included expanding their database, so I switched back. It definitely is better than it was, but the searches are often a little weird and it's not always easy to find some products or ingredients.

As I continue to monitor my health, I'm no longer that interested in weight loss per se, or calorie counts. But I've stuck with tracking my food intake via HealthWatch 360 because I have chronic deficiencies in a couple areas (iron, Vitamin D and calcium, to name three). The iron deficiency is caused by biologic and genetic factors so it's not entirely addressable via diet, but it is good to know when I'm in danger of having a day with little to no iron intake.

I can't stress enough how important it was to head into tracking food with the attitude that I was just seeking information, rather than using it as another way to beat myself up. Just knowing how what I'm eating contributes to how my body functions and approaching nutrition from a health perspective, instead of from a perspective that emphasizes restriction and "good/bad" foods, was a really eye-opening change for me that helped me see eating as something I could do to take care of myself, rather than something that was either a punishment or a reward.

If anyone knows the original source of this image, let me know.

This is what 222 pounds looks like...

What do you think of when you think of a 200-pound person? I can't answer that question for you, but I know what I think of. For most of my life, I didn't associate that number with beauty or health. The 200-pound mark has always been a psychological rubicon for me -- once crossed, and I crossed this particular milestone many, many years ago -- it represented a number that must be conquered, subdued. Beaten down, or beaten back. Annihilated.

Staying above that mark represented shame, and failure, and somehow being less of a full participant in life. Until, one day, it didn't anymore.

Sure, some might argue that acceptance means giving in. Knuckling under. Being lazy. Quitting. But somehow, in my journey to accept myself, I've truly come to see that the number doesn't mean anything.

I weighed myself yesterday. I'm going to break one of the last social taboos and tell the world what the scale said:

222 pounds

And this is what I looked like walking out the door yesterday:

Excuse the mess.
Dress: London Times Elbow Sleeve Side Drape Side Sheath Dress
Shoes: Payless Comfort Plus Janine Pointy-Toed Pump

I'm sure some of you still think that that picture represents someone who is unattractively large. Someone who should be embarrassed or ashamed. Someone who should be trying harder, being better, who shouldn't be happy about what she sees. And that's ok. But I can look at that picture and feel nothing but happy about the person smiling out of that picture.

The number is just a number. It doesn't mean anything real. My health is excellent. My blood pressure is lower than normal. My cholesterol is in the normal range. I exercise most days. I do pilates and teach dance and go to Zumba when I can fit a class into my schedule. I passed a stress test last year with flying colors. I feel healthy.

My ideal weight, according to all the charts, is 170 pounds, and that's at the high end of the range. To get to my "ideal weight," the person in that picture would have to lose more than 50 pounds. I wouldn't recognize her. (Also, none of my costumes would fit her.) I'm sure she would be a lovely person, but I think she's lovely now, inside and out. 

I know that sounds conceited. But I'm just being honest, and those of you who struggle with body image and self-acceptance, no matter your size or weight, know how hard it is to genuinely feel happy about the image in the mirror. Here's hoping we can all get there, and here's hoping I can stay there.

I'm really scared to post this publicly. But I have to keep reminding myself, people knowing my weight doesn't change anything. They see me every day. Putting a number on what they see might change how they see me, but it shouldn't. This is what 222 pounds looks like -- on me. It looks different on everyone. But the number itself is meaningless.  #itsjustanumber 

I'm Baaaaaaaaaack. Again. No, really, for real this time...

Well, this is awkward.

The big I’M BACK announcement, and then nothing. For – holy crap, has it been that long?!?! – almost two years. Wow, Fat Dancer, that’s pretty lame.

Well, I was struggling with some stuff related to body image and body positivity that I’ll write about later. I got super burnt out with a lot of things, including dance. And I had a sabbatical where I sat on my ass and gained a ton of weight. Enough weight that I could feel it having an impact on my health.

So I’m here to tell you, in case you weren't already convinced: sitting in one place for most of your waking hours is really bad for you. It’s bad for your heart, it’s bad for your back, and it’s bad for your emotional health.

I mean, nothing terrible happened. I didn't develop a debilitating diet-related disease or have a heart attack or anything. But I've always been 95-100% healthy, so when I started feeling a lot of pressure in my head, especially after eating salty foods, I knew blood pressure might be an issue. My blood pressure has always been around 110/70 so when I went to the local pharmacy to try out their blood pressure measuring machine and it read 135/90, I freaked out.  Went right to the doctor. Where I got properly tested and it turns out things weren't quite so dire but I was on the very edge of pre-hypertension. No medication, but my body was definitely telling me a change was needed.

Also seeing performance pictures from that spring made an impression: 

Looking at this now, I don't HATE it, but this is, as I have said before, not how I see myself in my head.

So on April 1, 2014, I made a commitment to just start tracking what I ate, promising myself no judgment and no negativity. I just wanted to get a nutritional baseline. I also started exercising (teaching two beginner dance classes a week wasn't cutting it). I’ll write more in future posts about the strategies I used (and continue to use), and the online/app tools that helped me on the way, but I’m happy to say that by Halloween I had lost almost 30 pounds. 

There's a little bit of an optical illusion going on here with my left arm, but I'll take it...

Also, my blood pressure is back to normal and my doctor has no concerns about my health once again.

But here’s my struggle, especially with this blog: how to reconcile body positivity, about which I feel passionately, with my personal unhappiness with the way I looked. Sure, I didn't feel great either, and that was at least 65% of the motivation to make some changes, but I can’t say it was only about health. I could not look at pictures of myself at that weight and be happy about it. Despite the fact that I have watched dancers of similar sizes raq it out beautifully. Sincerely. Not “beautifully for a woman her size”, but beautifully. Full. Stop.

But not me. So not only was I unhappy about what I was seeing in the mirror, I was hugely guilty about failing to be body positive by loving the way I looked.

So I spent the last year thinking a lot about that conflict, because I really want to keep writing about dance, body image, loving yourself at any size and all that jazz. I've come to some conclusions, which, you guessed it, will provide the fuel for future posts.

But for right now, I just want to say, once again: I’m baaaack! And this time, I hope I’m here to stay.